The presidential primary scam

Why the game is rigged, and why true democracy is only a secondary factor in the nation's rush to nominate the next president.

By Michael Scherer

Read more: Republican Party, Democratic Party, Florida, Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Opinion, Primaries, Michael Scherer, Barack Obama, 2008 election

Oct. 8, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- It's far worse than you think -- worse than hanging chads, faulty Diebold machines, and billionaires who bankroll last-minute attack ads. The American system for nominating a presidential candidate has about as much in common with actual democracy as Donald Duck has with a lake mallard. It's not just that this year's primaries have been further front-loaded, or that the early primary states aren't representative of the nation at large. There is only passing fairness. There is only the semblance of order. There is nothing like equal representation under the law.

The whole stinking process was designed by dead men in smoky parlors and refined by faceless bureaucrats in hotel conference rooms. It is a nasty brew born of those caldrons of self-interest known as political parties. At every stage, advantage is parceled out like so much magic potion. "The national interest is not considered in any form," says University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "Everything is left up to an ad hoc decision. It's chaotic."

That is not an exaggeration. Consider this: If you are a Republican, your vote for the presidential nominee will be worth more in Tennessee than in New York. If you are a Democrat, your vote in the primary will not count in Florida and is unlikely to count in Michigan. If you are a Republican in Wyoming, you probably won't get to vote at all, since only party officials have a say.

And it gets worse. This election cycle, a top Democratic candidate shaking someone's hand in Miami before the end of January is breaking the rules, unless that someone is handing the candidate a check at the same time. To put it another way, Democrats' communicating with voters has been barred in Florida, but taking money from voters is OK. To put it a third way, the system is not only irrational but offensive to the nation's most basic values. "The only way that you can hear a candidate campaign is if you are willing to pay a campaign contribution," explains Steven Geller, Florida's exasperated state Senate Democratic leader. "It is astounding."

They don't teach all of this in school, because even a fourth-grader would get up from his desk and walk out of the classroom in protest. And where would that leave the nation, if all the 10-year-olds knew their political system was built on a lie, that empty hooey about all Americans being entitled to a single, equal vote? What would it mean if they knew every time President Bush and President Clinton and President Reagan had bragged about bringing democracy to the world, they were hiding the fact that pure representative democracy has never come to the United States?

At root, the problem is that primaries are considered by law and tradition to be the internal affairs of political parties. For the most part, the people who designed this calamity have never been elected to anything. They are operatives, organizers, functionaries, a smart set of soldiers who move like marionettes. They lead state parties and sit on committees with names like "Rules and Bylaws." You have never seen their names in the newspaper, because reporters rarely attend the meetings. And there are dozens of them, so you can't blame any single person.

The system they produce is justified in the press, partly because reporters enjoy its results. We like traveling to the early voting states, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where candidates have to shake a lot of hands. Voters in these states are unrepresentative of the nation as a whole, but they tend to take presidential politics more seriously. They go to candidate town halls in large numbers and ask smart questions, allowing poorly funded candidates to compete with wealthy candidates on a more level playing field.

By most estimates, about 190,000 people will participate in the Iowa caucuses, with another 1.2 million or so marking ballots in New Hampshire and South Carolina. That's about 1.4 million people in a nation of 301 million, or one-half of 1 percent.

When these early states start voting in January, the rest of the nation will begin to pay attention. If tradition holds, the candidates who win the early contests will have a huge advantage. With some luck, both parties will unite behind a single consensus nominee within a month, all but making the ballots in the later states irrelevant. Each party's leadership prays for this to happen, because if it does not, if for some reason the Democratic or Republican grass roots remains split on a preference after February, then the American people will be forced to see how ugly the whole game really is.

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